Final Report Summary - HI-SENS (Surface Enhanced NMR Spectroscopy)
The project has achieved a greater than 10 000 fold improvement in the overall efficiency of dynamic nuclear polarisation surface enhanced NMR spectroscopy (DNP SENS) to increase the sensitivity of solid-state NMR experiments to observe structures on surfaces at atomic resolution. This has been done through a series of conceptual innovations in the design of polarisation sources, and in the development of new NMR experiments. We have capitalised on these steps forward to study the atomic level structures of surfaces that were not previously accessible, leading to the first full three-dimensional structures of an organometallic ligand on a disordered silica surface. By combining DNP SENS and isotopic labelling strategies we have now been able to obtain high-resolution one- and two-dimensional NMR spectra from less than 300 picomoles of an oligonucleotide deposited onto a glass plate. The surface area in these materials is 0.01 m2/g. This was completely unfeasible previously.